Capilano Suspension Bridge

Last weekend was a blast.  Mom, Andrew and I got to go up to Vancouver to visit with the Johnsons and see Emma perform in a play called Dancing at Lughnasa. She played an Irish woman in the 1930's who had 4 sisters and she did awesome!

We also got to visit the famous Capilano Suspension Bridge, one of the top tourist attractions in Vancouver that none of us had been to!  Mom will recall that I was griping quite a bit because we weren't expecting to have to pay money to go across the bridge, but I'm glad we did because it was really cool!  It is a big park area now with quite a few other cool features besides the bridge itself, including a treetop walk and a cliff walk. The bridge is about a 250 m long and it spans a really deep valley, so it's kind of scary to cross!  The thing that amazed me the most is how strong it is- just a few years ago, a huge cedar came crashing down onto the bridge during a storm.  Not only did the bridge not break, it SNAPPED the tree that fell onto it!  Pretty amazing.  Makes you feel a bit safer as you walk across it!  If you haven't been, I definitely recommend it.  

Deliberate Motherhood

There's a little book that I contributed to that has been published and I just thought I'd share it with all of you.  It's called Deliberate Motherhood and has been written by mothers from all over the US and of course at least one contributor from Canada.  It's a lovely little read - here's a link to a review featured in Deseret News.  It was nice to be included in this project although lately I feel like the only motherhood book I could contribute to would be called something like "Bare Minimum Motherhood" hopefully I will get back to being deliberate soon enough.  The book is good encouragement for me anyway as is the quote below:

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived.”

-Henry David Thoreau

 

Christmas Dinner

So we are fast approaching that time of year.  While I haven't heard final plans on who will be in Edmonton or where everyone will be for Christmas dinner I thought I'd send out a post soliciting input/thoughts on what would be included on your ideal Christmas menu.  I look forward to your thoughts.  By the way, Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving!

Yay for Thanksgiving!  It is one of my favorite holidays. Admittedly, I love all holidays, but Thanksgiving is pretty cool since it's a great chance to give thanks and an excuse to gorge yourself.

I'm sure you're already familiar with the history of Thanksgiving, but I'll give a brief recap.  The first Thanksgiving celebration was thought to be held in 1621 between the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians.  From then on, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states throughout the year.  It wasn't until 1863 that President Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.

I am thankful for lots of things, and one of those is Thanksgiving!  This year was lots of fun because along with Mom, Dad, Rico and Beej, we had G&G and Andrew visiting in Seattle.  It was so great to have them! 

Ward Prayer

So, as some of you may know, there is a somewhat strange Sunday night tradition among the BYU singles wards. It is known as Ward Prayer.  The basic agenda is that people gather together to sing a hymn, have a spiritual thought, commemorate birthdays, make announcements, say a prayer, and of course, socialize.  That is the main event, probably.  I have noticed a distinctly different style of Ward Prayer in my current ward as opposed to my previous ward.  My previous ward made it quite an event, often taking an hour to accomplish these few tasks (they would include extra things like apartment spotlights which could take a long time).  This ward downplays the socializing a little bit and up-plays the spiritual factor, which in my opinion is a very good thing.
The reason I bring any of this up is because our house, by virtue of our large living room, is now hosting ward prayer for the winter.  Maybe by writing about it I will become more enthusiastic about several singles taking over our house every Sunday night for the next little while :) Yay!

We did get a picture from last night, for fun.

Real Places

A trip to Israel puts the Bible and even the Book of Mormon - which starts in Jerusalem - in a whole new light.  Dad and I loved our time there. It was a phenomenal experience for us to be in the places we'd read about since we were children.  Legendary names became real - the Sea of Galilee, Bethlehem, Capernaum, the Jordan River.

                                     The Sea of Galilee

The Garden Tomb -  many believe this is the actual site where Jesus was buried.

For us it was a life changing experience.  We hope each of you gets the opportunity to travel there someday.  (These are 'phone photos'. I'll post more as soon as I can download the ones on my camera!)

Kids and Halloween Candy

I love this video.  If you guys haven't seen it, you should watch it!  There is also another one done from the same show from last year.

Teaching & Learning at Home & at School

I just went to the coolest Seminar this morning that was really inspiring. It was held at a nearby Private School and the theme was Teaching and Learning at Home. The premise was that schools in the US are not in their full and best form right now because

1. there is sometimes too much of a focus on achievements and grades, not learning
2. Young students don't have enough play time (the ideal should be 'no child left inside' not 'no child left behind,' :)
3. the students are told to often to sit down, be quiet, and listen
4. there are a lot of standardized tests

This results in students who might make it through college and even enter work force but

1. can't self direct
2. have been so scheduled and celebrated and programed that they don't know how to complete things on their own!
3. cry a lot
4. expect that after such a list of achievements, they should be promoted all the time

and just basically haven't learned as much as they could in their schooling.

What schools really need is

1. to encourage students for their effort not results
2. be more project based instead of having students spew out memorized facts
3. collaborate with local businesses, charities, and cultural centers so students are more experience rich and not information rich/experience poor as they are now
4. to have individualized lessons to help students develop their own unique talents

This results in students who are

1. creative, innovative and problem solving
2. more like Steve Jobs/ entrepreneureal
3. curious, self directed
4. communicative and able to collaborate

So those are some of my thoughts after the seminar. It was interesting. Of course this is a generalized summation of some pretty deep ideas that are supported by studies and observation, but it was definitely eye opening!

Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

 

The title of this post comes from the movie "Galaxy Quest" (which, if you haven't seen, you should.  It's absolutely hilarious, featuring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Alan "Professor Snape" Rickman).  Essentially, the crew in the movie never gave up despite long odds and managed to defeat their enemy.

The same is true in sports.  As you know, I'm a strong advocate of never leaving a game early, even if your team is losing badly.  A sportswriter I read noted that if your team is down by a lot at halftime, you have just as much time to erase that lead as the other team had to build it.

Such a remarkable turnaround took place in England recently.  In a knockout tournament (not the regular English Premier League season) Jordan's favorite team, Arsenal, faced Reading, who had just been promoted to the top flight that season.  Arsenal was the obvious favorite, but Reading managed to strike first.  And second.  And third.  And, yes, fourth.  All in the 1st half.  When they scored to go up 4-0, the TV broadcast showed a couple of fans wearing Arsenal jerseys leaving the game in disgust.  Their loss, because they missed one for the ages.

Arsenal managed to get one back to go into halftime down 4-1.  In the 2nd haf, they kept chipping away and got another goal to make it 4-2.  Then they scored again, making it 4-3.  It took until the 5th minute of 2nd half stoppage time, but they got the equalizer to level the match at 4-4.  Because this was a knockout tournament, there had to be a winner, so it went to extra time.  Arsenal then scored again to make it 5-4, but Reading responded with their own equalizer.  Arsenal then got another two goals in the dying moments to win 7-5.

Don't leave early.  Never give up.  Never surrender.

Downton Abbey Mania!

I know many of us are fans of this British period drama! So for Halloween this year, I had the idea of dressing up as Lady Sybil and having Andrew dress up as Branson (everyone knows they're a better couple than Mary and Matthew, right?).  However, I didn't know how we'd be able to pull of authentic looking costumes.
Until... Andrew mentioned that his grandma sews costumes a lot and she might be willing to do it.  So he asked her and she said she would!  Not even a week later, our costumes arrived all the way from California.  I was so excited to see that the costumes were almost exactly the same as the ones in the show!  She is quite talented.
We wore them at our ward Halloween party on Saturday and got several excited comments from girls who had seen the show.  Yesterday, we decided to make our rounds about campus in costume.  A girl stopped us and asked if she could take our photo.  We agreed and she snapped us in our best Downton Abbey pose.  Little did we know that it would be posted to the BYU Facebook page an hour later!  They took lots of pictures of people's costumes throughout the day. There were lots of thrilled people commenting on our picture and it was very gratifying to see that so many people were fans.  My only regret is that I found out some spoilers about season 3 in the comments section... I haven't even seen season 3 yet!  Oh well.
Probably my favorite moment in this costume was when we were walking through the bookstore and the cashier's face lit up as we walked in.  She said, "you guys make me so happy!" It was a fun costume idea and I'm glad we could do it!  All thanks to Andrew's grandma!

 This is the picture that got us on the BYU Facebook page!

We took a picture before our ward's Halloween party on Saturday night as well.